


Under the Moons of Darillium: Part 7 The Darillium Dream Snatchers

by Stardance1



Series: Under the Moons of Darillium: A Night of Adventures [7]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), The Diary of River Song (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song, Singing Towers of Darillium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 03:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16441937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stardance1/pseuds/Stardance1
Summary: River and the Doctor continued their honeymoon, but they are suddenly distressed and not able to sleep. There may have been more than one kind of creature lurking in Darillium’s Crystal Layer, and if this parasite has attached itself to them, neither River nor the Doctor nor the Tardis are safe. Suddenly in dire peril, River and the Doctor will need to work together and face unspoken fears in order to dispatch these swarming villains. Can they find a way to fight this menace together? Or will they succumb to the threat…





	Under the Moons of Darillium: Part 7 The Darillium Dream Snatchers

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this is Part 7 of a Series.

The Doctor was a veritable menace at a black market.  
“I just can’t take you anywhere!” River said to herself with a smile.   
She shook her head slowly, still smiling.   
He always made such a big deal about needing to come with her.   
He'd put up such a fuss, about the dark elements of black markets, but in the end, he always had much more fun than she did.   
After all she came to black markets to assess the local trade, see what kind of trouble was stirring, but the Doctor?   
He was a kid in a candy store.   
Admiring every knick-knack he invariably found an old gizmo maker with whom he could stop and compare notes.   
At the start, he would try to stroll around inconspicuously observing, but after a few moments he would break character and pull River excitedly from booth to booth showing off every trinket and bit of alien tech that he could find.  
Now, after hours of walking around and stopping to share lunch at a delicious Darillium street food stand, River stood at the corner opposite the market, underneath a lamppost, her arms heavy with parcels which the Doctor had purchased, and one tiny bag with what she’d wanted: a zero-energy harvester battery charger, for her handheld computer.   
This was ridiculous, he’d be ages more before he was ready.   
She walked over to him and unceremoniously placed all of their parcels at his feet.   
“l’m going to walk around for a bit Sweetie, I’ll be right back,” she called out as she was already walking away.  
He nodded happily and distractedly, not stopping his conversation with the freed Osiran android about the proper shape and repair of chronic particle accelerators.   
River walked through the aisles of the black market alone. There were all maners of bootleggers, aphrodisiac peddlers, alien tech and fuel scavengers. At the very end, she stopped at a fruit smuggler stand that advertised fruit from Sol III.  
“These are from Earth? I don’t know them…” River asked the proprietor, an old wrinkled man with long bony hands.   
The fruit resembled long pale green pods, with white centers and large black button-sized seeds.   
“Yes, these are pawpaws… they are like the common Earth banana, only softer and sweeter and creamy like ice cream.”   
“I’d always wanted to have one, that’s so interesting you have them here… I’d like to purchase two”.   
“2 credits.”   
River smiled, turned over two small tokens, and accepted the fruit.   
But as she turned to leave, she noticed some children playing in a wet and dirty alleyway next to the market.   
There were a handful of young girls actually, aged perhaps 8-12, skipping on some sort of hop scotch: the Darillium version of course.   
She saw them out of the corner of her eye and instinctively looked up the street to make sure that they were safe.   
There were no signs of ground transports, so she turned to find her way back to the Doctor.   
Just then, a gust of wind brought over the echos of a song they were singing.   
It was a familiar melody she thought, a children’s nursery rhyme set to music for their game.   
She smiled..  
Wait a minute, did they just say River?   
Waves of dread suddenly began to crash upon her mind, but she tried to ignore them.   
She turned to the direction where the Doctor was meant to be, only that stand was now closed.   
Another gust of wind brought additional fragments of their song over, and River strained to hear: 

"River, River   
They’re coming back to find her   
River, River   
They’re finally going to silence her

River, River   
Can you feel her shiver   
River, River   
the killer is a whisper 

River, River   
The Silence won’t forgive her  
River, River   
No one’s left to miss her

River, River   
He’ll live to regret you   
River, River  
He’ll live to forget you 

River, River   
They're coming back to find her …" 

The street lamps shuttered leaving River in darkness. 

Madame Kovarian was coming back for her.   
She knew it, that’s what that rhyme was warning her of….   
Suddenly someone tugged at her arm sleeve and she froze, a chill running through her heart.   
She turned, it was one of the little girls with pigtails, but her face, River knew that face… 

“Amy?" she stuttered… 

"Didn’t I tell you to look after him?"

A cry caught in her throat. “Mum?” 

"I told you to look after him Melody, but you lost him. Now he’s gone."

River gasped and looked around, but the market was closed, every stall was empty. She turned again and the children were gone from the alley.   
She stood there alone. The echo of the wind swirling and something else… drops of rain perhaps… 

River awoke suddenly, the room encased in darkness, alone in an empty bed. She breathed in deeply and then expelled a slow sigh. 

She opened her eyes thinking that she must be in StormCage. There was the sound of rain, or thunder. That must be what woke her.   
But as the haze of sleep drifted away she realized she wasn’t in StormCage.   
She was home, in the Tardis.   
She swallowed.   
The Doctor was gone.   
Where was he?   
The Doctor had spent so many of her nights in StormCage with her, distracting her by taking her on adventures or to parties, or just letting her stretch out on the Tardis, go for a nighttime swim, sleep in their bed.   
Sometimes they’d even stay in StormCage, he’d curl up with her and sleep on her cot.   
Not that they always did much sleeping.   
But on the odd night when he couldn’t make it back to her and she hadn’t escaped, she’d wake up just like this. The lightning and rain pouring over head. Her hands searching for him in the night, And her all alone. 

She shivered.  
She put on his robe partially because she was cold, but also because she felt a need to be surrounded by his scent.   
She got up and began a barefoot search from him throughout the the Tardis. 

Finally, she found him in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea.   
He was mindlessly staring into it, the steam swirling distorted clouds in front of his eyes, similar to those already clouding his mind.  
He shook his head, and attacked the fog with dunks of Jammie Dodgers.   
He put the whole round biscuit in his mouth and chewed distractedly. 

Then the sound of River’s steps reached him and he looked up, instantly sorry he'd left her asleep. 

They don’t say it to each other often enough, but he knows that she hates to wake up without him, and honestly he hates to wake up without her. He puts his cup down and goes over to embrace her.   
He wraps his arms around her.   
"River, what are you doing up?" he asks, still holding her in his arms.   
She shrugs and looks almost childlike in his large maroon velvet robe.   
He tucks the collar down, around her neck to keep her warm, and places a kiss at the top of her head.   
"Let’s go back to bed, shall we?”   
“You haven’t finished your tea…” she protested mildly.   
A soft smile curled his lips. “Don’t worry, it was really the Jammie Dodger I was after. I had a bad dream, I couldn’t sleep, or I wouldn’t have gotten up at all. I’m sorry...”   
“You did?”   
“Hmm, but it’s over now…”   
“I think I did too,” River said rubbing her eyes, “but I can’t seem to recall now.”   
The Doctor took her hand in his and said, “Let’s go back to bed and we’ll make sure it’s all forgotten."  
He led her back to their bed, and it was several hours before they used it again for sleep. 

_________________________ 

River awoke in darkness.   
She could see nothing around her, so she darted her eyes back and forth in search of something, anything, beyond the darkness.   
But only nothingness was there.   
She couldn’t breathe properly; there wasn’t enough air, and yet all she could hear was the hiss of air in her ears, and the pressure of a thousand tonnes in her lungs.   
Her hearts were pounding and she tried to bring her hands to her chest, but she couldn’t move her limbs; she couldn’t move at all, except her head and her eyes, though no matter where they turned there was nothing to see.   
Suddenly her arms and legs were moving, or rather they were being moved. It was not by her own volition, she was just a puppet with her strings being maneuvered. Suddenly there was light, and she was standing on a shore she knew too well from her nightmares, facing her husband in the first face she’d known.   
Her arm was extended, then rising, weapon in hand, preparing to shoot and end the life of the man she loved.   
A shiver ran up her spine.   
Through her mask she screamed “Run! Run Doctor, please I can’t stop this you have to RUN!”   
But he just stood there, not hearing, a tortured look on his face. “River, why are you doing this?”   
“Please run, please you have to run!!!”   
Her shoulder jerked in pain from the discharge of her weapon, it fired and fired again and the recoil of the weapon seemed to run like fire through her arm and into her hearts. She could hear the guttural growl of her screams as her husband lay dying in front of her.   
Then out of the corner of her eye her parents appeared, having run over from wherever they’d been observing.   
Shame coursed through her as they knelt by the Doctor’s mangled corpse and she stood frozen in front of them.   
It was Amy who spoke first, “How could you Melody, why couldn’t you stop this?”   
In response, River’s arm pointed her weapon at her father and discharged.   
As he lay dying in Amy’s arms, the weapon fired again, killing her too.   
River closed her eyes and screamed, the loudest scream that had ever been uttered, trying with every fiber of her being to deafen the world around her.   
When she opened her eyes again, Madame Kovarian and the Silence were there.  
This time River willed the weapon to discharge, and it did, repeatedly shooting until the sound of firing seemed to match the racing of her own hearts.   
River fell backward onto the sand from the force of the weapon's recoil. She picked up her hands from where she’d fallen, and they were soaked in blood. All around her the sands of Lake Silencio were soaked in the blood of her family and her enemies. Bright red blood that mixed together and slowly seeped into the waters of the lake.   
She tried to wipe her hands clean on her chest, but she was already covered in blood splatter and gore.  
Nothing she could do would make them clean again.   
Still unable to fully move her limbs, River dragged herself across the bloody sands to where Madame Kovarian lay dying.   
“Why did you do this to me?!?” River screamed at her.   
“We did nothing Melody Pond. This was always in your heart. It was always in your control.”   
Suddenly the Doctor’s mutilated corpse reanimated and grabbed her ankle from behind.   
She screamed in terror.   
Through the blood gurgling in his mouth he whispered, “You could have been more than this River, you could have been so much more.”   
Blood poured out of him but she pulled herself too him and wrapped him in her arms. “I can fix this, please my love, please, don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.”   
In terror, River sat bolt upright in bed.   
Her arms, her face, her nightgown were drenched in what she thought was sweat, but no, they were her tears.   
She covered her face with her hands and then rammed them into her hair.   
She pulled up her legs and lay her head on her knees.   
She could hear the rainfall in the distance.  
She had to think. And then it struck her.   
The Doctor. She had to tell the Doctor. It was important she tell the Doctor.   
She turned to look for him in his space, but again he was missing.   
“Ow!” she grabbed her head, and a sudden stabbing pain crossed her brain like an electric current.   
She jumped out of bed and ran out of the room and through the Tardis looking for the Doctor. 

She found him in the Console Room, crouched down below the main monitor.   
He was holding the Tardis’ telepathic circuit link like a pipe he meant to swing down on an imaginary foe.   
She knelt next to him and reached out her hands.   
“No!” he screamed, “I can be converted to a Cyberman! I’m not a Dalek. Don't kill me, I have two hearts!”   
“Doctor!” River tried to shake him, but he stabbed her shoulder with the telepathic circuit.   
She screamed as nightmare visions from the Tardis stream through her, the TimeWar, Trenzalore, the end of the Universe.  
River pulls the circuit out of her shoulder, and with all her strength, slaps the Doctor to wake him. 

He gasps, his eyes wide, his face seared with her handprint.   
“River, what’s going on?”   
“I don’t know Doctor. You were having a nightmare and…”   
She couldn’t finish her thought, because suddenly the rain and thunder outside turned into what sounded like a hail storm. Boulder-sized hail dipped in howling wind.   
The Tardis cloister bell began to ring. Not once, not twice, but as though all of the times the bell had ever rung or would ever ring were occurring simultaneously, the one on top of each other.   
The Doctor and River covered their ears and scrambled to their feet, racing toward the door.   
Before the Doctor opened it, River pulled him back to stop him.   
“What about the storm?”   
“I think we’ll be safer out there than in here River!” he screamed back, trying to be heard over the bells.   
He flung open the door and he and River tumbled out into the Darillium night.   
__________________________________

Completely perplexed, they both stood up.   
It was a clear night.   
The moonlight was bright and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.   
It was bitterly cold and they both shivered, moving closer to each other for warmth and comfort.   
But there were no signs of the storm they’d been hearing. 

River looked up to the Doctor, shaking her head, “I don’t understand, what’s going on?”   
“You tell me, you just slapped me and I was in the Console Room!”   
“You were having a nightmare. Something about Daleks and Cybermen. You stabbed me with the Tardis telepathic circuit and it was like her consciousness coursed through me, I saw scenes of war and destruction, the end of times, stars dying.”   
River stepped back from the Doctor. “Doctor, what can it mean.”   
“And you River, have you had bad dreams?”   
“I’ve told you I don’t remember. I haven’t been sleeping well. I keep getting up to find you and you’re gone.”   
“We need to get back inside, but we can’t sleep, do you understand?”   
River nodded. “What will we do about the cloister bells?”   
“I have an idea. I’m going to send the Tardis consciousness to the Zero Room to recover. Whatever is going on, it’s outside of that room. We’ll have to figure this out together River but without her help.”   
“What should I do.”   
“Run in and power her down, start turning everything off. I will take care of sending her sentience to the Zero Room.”   
He grabbed her hand. “Ready?”   
River took a deep breath. “Ready.”   
The Doctor snapped his fingers to open the door, and they ran into together.   
As soon as they were inside, the sounds of the bells and the storm were overwhelming. But with every switch and lever they powered down, the sound diminished until River and the Doctor stood in the dark shell of the Tardis. 

The Doctor then brings over both of their sonic screw drivers, and River’s computer.   
They begin to scan, each other and the rooms in the Tardis, and then begin to calculate.   
Halfway through a hallway, the Doctor stops and gasps.   
“Doctor, what’s the matter.”   
“How much time do you think has passed since we left the crystal layer?”   
“I don’t know, maybe a full 24 hours? I know I keep trying to go back to sleep….”   
“We’ve lost a week worth of hours River.”   
She gasped, “That can’t be true.”   
River holds up her computer and furiously types into the keypad. But as the results pop up they confirm what the Doctor has said. 

“What is this Doctor, what could this be?”   
“I don’t know River, and I’m not even sure how we can find out without the Tardis.” 

River pauses for a moment then reaches out her hand and takes his… “The library Doctor, let’s go to library.” 

He nods. Together they ascend the circular steps to the library on the second Tardis deck.   
The Doctor opens a box on a shelf and throws up a small ball, the size and image of a glass marble shooter. Once it rises to the top it hangs down and radiates a bright light by which they can read.   
“It’s a compressed gravity globe… I thought they would come in handy here.”   
“Smart thinking.” River said with a small smile.   
They sat down together and went through the Doctor’s collection of old dusty tomes.   
In silence the Doctor and River sat, each bent over different volumes, turning pages and slamming covers. 

_____________________ 

River sensed that the Doctor’s breathing had changed.   
He was looking off into the distance.   
His face was filled with sadness and a jumble of emotion. 

She sat on her hands, and waited quietly for him to regain control and begin.  
All the while, she was filled with terror.  
Finally he spoke.   
“I know what they are, and I know we can’t beat them.”   
“Tell me…”   
“They are a type of Air Rod, or Sky Fish, known as Dream Snatchers. They’re called Dream Snatchers because they snatch everything from you, your last hopes and dreams, leaving you to go mad from your nightmares.”   
“Doctor there are Air Rods on most planets in the Universe, including Earth, they jump dimensions and play in the light, they dance in stardust, they don’t kill…”   
“These are different River, these are like the drone bees or soldier ants of their hives. They’re collecting, stealing, amassing, I don’t know what or for what purpose, but they can weave in and out of time and reality and dimensions as though they were layers of lace. They can render a person starved to death... of hope, of sleep, and ultimately of sanity. Their theft of dreams leave a person unable to distinguish between what is life and what is a nightmare.”   
“The book must have some suggestions on how to be rid of them…” River said with a small reassuring smile, and she pulled the text that he’d been reading toward herself.   
He stood up, angry and tired and frustrated, “Don’t you get it River? I failed you, I failed to protect you and now we’re both doomed. There is no way to beat this. How many times in a minute do you breathe when you’re afraid? 20? How many times do your hearts beat in fear in an hour? 12,000? How many dreams do you dream in a sleep cycle? 6? They’re extra-dimential creatures, bending our reality, what we see and experience, controlling it from a place between dimensions where we can not reach. We are their designated victims, we have a target drawn on our backs. We are being hunted and we can not hurt them. In that fraction of a second when your eyes close in a blink, in that moment when your hearts relax in diastole, in that nanosecond when you’re lungs have expelled your breath and before they can breath in again, when your mind releases reality and you fall into sleep, they will always be there, hungry, ready to pounce into your consciousness and take over.”   
The Doctor turned and walked away towards the steps.   
River stood up anxiously. “Doctor, where are you going?”   
“I need some air. I’ll get us lunch.” 

River sighed. She sat down and went back to studying the text. There was no point in trying to help his brooding right now.   
But she wasn’t giving up, he could give up on himself, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She believed in him too much. They’d figure this out together. She pulled down a note pad from the library shelf and began to make notations and jot down ideas. 

______________________________________ 

The Doctor opened the door and sat down in a small cafe.   
He pulled up a rickety stool and reclined onto a small, old, dirty table.   
He looked around for a menu, but none was there.   
Overhead an old metal fan lazily spun, clanking the power pull cord every time it went around.   
The sound drilled into his brain.  
The fan was so slow, it didn’t even help with this stifled air.   
Outside sand and dust swirled around the door.   
The Doctor served himself some water from a plastic carafe on the table. He made a face.   
He turned looking for a waiter or someone who could bring him something cool, like a fizzy drink with ice… and a menu so that he could order lunch.   
But there was no one.   
Suddenly the screen door to the restaurant opened and closed with a squeaky slam.   
The Doctor looked up and observed a suavely dressed man and his wife enter.   
The man turned to him and smiled. The Doctor stood up, shocked … It was the Master.   
The Master pulled a lovely a sexy woman from the shadows, she was in red sequined dress and a black fur coat.   
She stepped under the fan light where the Doctor sat, and at last he could see her face.   
It was River!   
“What’s going on!” the Doctor shouted incredulously.   
The Master laughed and wrapped an arm around the Doctor’s shoulder.   
“Don’t be upset my friend, I told you the next time I come through the Mountains of Solace and Solitude I’d stop by for a visit. Plus the wife has always wanted to visit the Continent of the Wild Endeavor… She’s so wild!” The Master growled suggestively at River and smacked her bottom. She laughed.   
The Doctor blinked at him, “Are you saying we’re on Gallifrey?”   
The Master laughed, “Of course we’re on Gallifrey, YOU’ve never left the planet!”   
The Master turned toward his wife with a chuckle and an explanation, “He had so much potential when we were at the Academy together, but he never graduated, and he never got a chance to go anywhere!”   
The Doctor reached out toward her and touched the collar of her fur coat, “River, I…”   
“Excuse me, my name is Melody.” She gave him a disdainful look and took a step back, out of his reach.   
The Doctor shook his head, “I don’t understand, I’ve traveled the Universe, throughout time and space… with HER!” He took a step toward River … or Melody…but the Master took a step back with her and they both laughed at his confusion.   
“Not likely!” she laughed heartily.   
“Old friend, you’re mistaken, you’re probably just lost in tales of my adventures, and a little too much Aldebaran Brandy.”   
“What about the time war, I saved Gallifrey from falling…”   
“No I did that, by partnering with the Cybermen and destroying the Daleks!”   
“How did you partner with the Cybermen?”   
“By converting everyone on Earth, everyone who’d ever lived. It was marvelous. A great day for Gallifrey!”   
The Doctor chocked on his own words.   
“What about…”   
He couldn’t finish the sentence because the Master, and the love of the Doctor's life, were engaged in a passionate kiss.   
He could feel his hearts physically constrict in pain.

The Doctor screamed and twisted away with a sudden jolt, banging his head on a metal railing.   
He was sitting at the bottom of the circular steps, soaking, dripping in water.   
River stood in front of him, a bucket in hand.   
She knelt in front of him and brushed his hair into place with her fingers.   
“I’m sorry my love. I could hear you crying. You were mumbling something about how the Universe didn’t need you, and that I didn’t either.” River leaned forward and brushed a kiss at the bruise on his temple. “I unequivocally know both of those statements to be false, so I thought a bucket of water would help.”   
The Doctor leaned back against the step and covered his head with his hands.   
Then he thought better of it and pulled River in to him and reclined her over his knee as he kissed her deeply, plunging his tongue into her mouth, biting her lips softly, moaning kisses into her neck, and pulling on her earlobe with his lips.   
They were both out of breath when River finally sat up on the floor in front of the steps.   
“That must have been quite a dream!”   
“I don’t even remember anymore, but I’m quite certain it was important for me to do that.”   
River smirked. Stood up, and held her hand out to help the Doctor to his feet.   
“Sweetie, it’s always important for you to do that.”   
The Doctor stood up, next to her. She linked her arm through his and began to lead him to be Kitchen.   
“Where are we going River?” he asked.   
River smiled up into his eyes, “You’re going to put the kettle on, and I’m going to tell you how I’ve solved this whole thing… 

________________ 

River was sitting at the kitchen table, scribbling on the library notepad when the Doctor finally sat down across from her with cups of sweetened milk tea and a plate of biscuits from a tin.   
River ate a biscuit and took a sip, chuckling to herself at how over sweetened the Doctor had made it.   
He looked so concerned, he hadn’t touched his own tea.   
She smiled, reached across the table and took his hand.   
“Look I have an idea, drink you’re tea. We’re going to need the energy, but I think we can get through this…”   
The Doctor picked up his cup and took a gulp of tea.   
“I did some research while you napped, I discovered that these types of Air Rods are particularly attracted to both mountains and caves. The minerals in the Crystal Layer act like giant lightning rods, and I think this hive had lain dormant there since the colonists' times. They probably tortured them and that’s why they never returned to the caves. The Dream Snatchers survived in suspended animation and perhaps occasionally feeding off of the birds until we arrived...   
When we got there, we experienced considerable fear…”   
Like a wave of ice, the Doctor remembered the fear he felt when River ran into the Tardis…   
She shook her head at him, knowing what he was thinking, “It wasn’t just you, but of us experienced fear down there, and they felt our energy and when the Tardis arrived, they all woke up at once and swarmed. They infected us and then we infected her….”   
“How do we get them off, River…”   
“You’re right, we can’t do anything permanently, they exist beyond our touch… But I figured a few more things out from the books in the library. First of all, the rain we’ve kept hearing is the tiny sonic boom as they cross into the dimension. More keep coming so we have to get them loose and get them off our trail. Water helps detach them….”   
The Doctor smirked at her, “Hence the bucket?”   
“Yes, that’s why I threw water on you…to dampen the energy field and get them to release the connection. But alone, this won’t help. They steal hopes and dreams, and in order to shake them off we have to beat them at their own game, or rather not be beaten by their simulation. If we don’t give in, they’ll be weak from the energy they’ve used to give us the nightmare, and won’t receive anything from us in return. They’re like parasites, once they don’t see us as a food source, they’ll move on….  
Here’s the plan, we need to rig a time frame, maybe half an hour, to beat the dream and then drop us into the swimming pool to be sure that they’re off. After the pool we need to restart the Tardis, turn on the sprinklers, and wait for them to flee. There’s nothing around here for miles, I think they’ll retreat back to the caves and then possibly leave this dimension when they realize neither the birds nor the colonists are coming back.”   
“But River, you’ve forgotten one important thing… How do you expect us to beat them? We certainly don’t have a good track record so far when it comes to their nightmares.”   
River grinned at him, “That’s the easiest part Doctor. I know a way we can guarantee success.”   
“How?”   
“We face them together.” River took her teacup and clinked his in a silent toast before taking a final gulp and putting it down in its saucer.   
She stood up and continued, “We’ll lay down together, over the swimming pool, with the timer, you’ll need to rig a device or a trinket to drop us into the pool when the time is up, we’ll use our telepathic link… You can project sleep into my mind and I’ll project it back into yours. If we fall asleep like that, linked and at the same time, I think we should be in the same dream. And…”  
“And if we’re in the same dream, we can fight the fear together.”   
River nodded, “Bingo!”   
______________________________ 

They get to work.   
River and the Doctor rig a net made up of silken threads from Vortis, given to the Doctor by the giant Menoptra butterfly people. They weave them together and the Doctor programs River’s computer, along with odds and ends from storage, to suspend the net in gravity, until such a time that the Doctor or River give the command. He ties a receptor piece to both of their heads, and links it to their sonic screwdrivers.   
They climb into the net and lay down next to each other.   
Then they lower their mental walls and link their minds.   
“The code word is my name, if either of us says my name before the 30 minute timer is up, the sonic will trigger the computer to release us into the pool.”   
“I’m ready Doctor,” River said as she reached out her hands and placed them on the Doctor’s temples.  
He nods, and does the same to her.   
“Now,” he says in her mind, and at the same time they both project sleep into the other’s mind.   
A second later there is nothing but darkness.   
River and the Doctor open their eyes.   
They’re in a dark room, with each other.   
A light from a moon overhead casts a glow down toward the couple, and they see that they’re sitting, facing each other, at a bistro table.   
“Doctor? What’s going on?”   
“I think they’re trying to tell us we’re the nightmare we have to face.”   
“Each other?”   
“Or ourselves? Think River, what were your fears, do you remember the nightmares now?”   
“Maybe… but they’re hazy, I think that they were about loosing you, about loosing myself to evil…” River groaned and grabbed her head as a sharp pain crossed her mind.   
“They feel us fighting back and they’re causing the pain, my mind hurts too, we just have to power through…. If it hurts it must be working… My nightmares were the same, about not being good enough…," he reached out and held her hand, "about not being worthy of you.”   
River looked at him completely flabbergasted. “Doctor, I’ve never been worthy of you!”   
“River I’ve been in love with you since the first moment that I met you, and yet before we crashed onto Darillium you passed a lie detector saying that I’d never loved you, that I was incapable of love.”   
River snorted, “I was raised a psychopath and a trained assassin, you think I can’t fool a lie detector?”   
“Did you?”   
River looked down at her hands, and then she shook her head.   
“Why would YOU love a trained assassin and a psychopath? I knew how much you cared, but so much of our past happens and unhappens and happens again a different way, crossed time streams and alternate realities, halleucegenic lipstick, so much running…. so many times it felt like you were fighting me, that your love was in spite of how you felt,” she sighed, "even our first wedding didn’t really happen.”  
The Doctor stood up, absolutely horrified. “What did you just say?”   
Now it was River’s turn to stand up, “Our wedding…”   
“The sacred Gallifreyan ceremony with both of your parents…”   
“The short Las Vegas version of the sacred Gallifreyan Ceremony that we did IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY, while you were in a Tesselecter suit…”   
“I was not in that suit when we consummated the marriage.” The Doctor smirked and River smacked his chest.   
The Doctor looked down at her seriously, “Are you saying that you didn’t feel that I was your husband?”   
River glared at him, but shook her head, “No.”   
“Are you saying that you didn’t feel like my wife?”   
Again River shook her head. The Doctor stepped around the table and placed both hands on her arms.   
“Then what are you saying River?”   
“I loved you absolutely. I felt like your wife, and I felt you were my husband, but I also felt how much you were fighting me…” She looked off to the side.   
“River, I was consumed by conflict not because I didn’t absolutely, helplessly and hopelessly love you, but because I was wracked with guilt. You were a baby, stolen from your parents because of me. I could have found a way to save you, save you all of that grief, let you be Melody Pond, Timelord goddess of Earth….” the Doctor paced around nervously, “I tried, a dozen times, a hundred times, to take you back, but I couldn’t let myself erase you.”   
He cupped her face in his hands, “River, you saved me, changed the Universe, so many times. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t take you back to your parents and let you live as Melody and lose River. You don’t understand loss like I do, but I couldn’t lose you too. It’s all my fault.”   
She picked up her hands and placed them on the Doctor's cheeks, as tears rolled down her own face, “Loss? I don’t know loss? I’ve lived for hundreds of years, across time and space, I’ve had to lose you, body after body, wondering if this next body would know me, want me, need me. I lost my parents and myself to the Silence and Kovarian, my freedom to StormCage, and through all of that Doctor, a million times over I have sworn to you that I choose this life, by your side. I’ve wanted nothing else. I’ve made you promise not to change a moment of our past together, no matter what happens. This life, by your side, it’s all that I’ve ever dreamed about.”   
He looks into her eyes, he has to confess, “I don’t know what’s coming, once these 24 years are up…”   
“I won’t stop fighting. No one gets handed a roadmap to their relationship. We have no idea how time is supposed to work for us, and we still don’t. It’s not parallel and it’s not in reverse order and it can be a confusing beautiful mess, but we just have to live one day at a time together and trust each other…”   
He looked her into the eyes, and made a vow… “I trust you River. Always and completely. I won’t change the past and I don’t know what the future will bring, but I swear I will fight for you, for us.”   
She smiled beautifully for him, filled with the brilliance of life and the glimmer of stars.   
“It’s funny,” the Doctor said, “there’s so much of your parent’s in you… Your father stood vigil over your mother for 2000 years, and you’ve got his patience and his passion. And when your eyes sparkle with intelligence or adventure, you're just like mother. But so much of you is just a miracle…. And I love you.”   
River stepped up on her toes and kissed him, then whispered against his lips… “I love you, Doctor.”   
He groaned and wrapped her into his arms.   
He deepened their kiss and one arm settled at her waist while the other hoisted her hips onto the bistro table.   
She wrapped her legs around him and clutched his shoulders to bring him closer.  
She was pulling him down over her, by the lapels of his jacket, when he placed both hands and forearms around her and leaned forward on the bistro table, she began to feverishly unbutton his shirt. She needed to feel his skin beneath her hands as she ran her hand across his chest.   
He leaned further into her and she gasped from the pressure of his bulging erection.   
His lips claimed hers again and his tongue plunged into her mouth.   
He tore his lips away from her mouth and then trailed kisses down her throat and to her breasts, tearing open her shirt and laying his head on her chest, stopping to hear the racing beat of her hearts.   
River moaned again, wrapping her legs more tightly around him and tangling her fingers in his hair.   
In her mind, she whispered his name… completely having lost a sense of where they were…   
Suddenly both she and the Doctor were falling, tangled with each other and tangled with the Menoptran net, into the swimming pools.   
They plunged into the cold water and they clung to each other for buoyancy.   
River laughed helplessly and splashed the Doctor.   
"River reach for the Sonic! Go turn the Tardis on and switch the sprinklers on!"  
River reached into the Doctor’s pockets...  
“River, that’s not the Sonic!"  
"I know Sweetie!” she leans forward and whispers in his ear, “I just wanted him to know I’d be right back to keep him company…”   
River pulled the Sonic screwdriver out and zapped herself free, then handed it to the Doctor while she climbed out and ran to the Console.   
She switched the Tardis on, pulling her consciousness back from the Zero Room and immediately set the sprinklers to start. Then she flung opened the outer doors to give any Dream Snatchers the chance to flee.   
Then she ran back to the swimming pool.

There she ran up the diving board and jumped off, flying through the air with the grace of mermaid or a siren. She dove into the pool and after swimming a couple of strokes to be next to the Doctor she flung her arms around him and kissed him.   
Laughingly he said, "River, do be sensible.”   
She kissed him again and whispered into his ear, “absolutely not, Doctor.”   
And his eyes widened because as water fell from the ceiling all around them, suds of soapy bubbly foam began to rise all around them.   
He gasped and looked at her in surprise… “River, what’s happening.”   
She smiled, “Do you remember when I was teaching at Luna U. We were supposed to go to a retro Earth party, a foam party, and we missed it because we had to save the Prince of Wales from imminent disaster of his own making and then we couldn’t go back to the party because of the risk of a paradox….”   
The Doctor was still looking around incredulously as the Swimming Pool room filled with soap and bubbles from the sprinklers in the ceiling… “I remember, River, but...”   
“Well, I thought what better time than now to make up for that…”   
She grinned and pulled his hand, leading him in a slippery run to the jacuzzi.   
She sat the Doctor down in a corner hydromassage seat, and switched on some music, Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. As the sound of the slow piano swelled with the vibration of the cellos and the violins, River sat perched in his lap, kneeling on the arm rests at his his sides. The under water lighting turned on, and cast monochromatic blues over the translucent shimmer of the bubbles.   
River kissed him and ran her fingers through his hair and he felt dizzy with the reflections of blue lights on the bubbles that rose around them. River leaned forward and switched on the cross swim jets, and she held on by the side bars as the Doctor propped himself back with his toes curled at the edges to be sure they wouldn’t slide away together.   
His arms tightened hold of her, but like a water sprite she smiled and ducked below the water, unfastening his clothes and using her breathing bypass to stay below and take the full length of his desire into her mouth.   
Between the jets and her mouth and her hands and the music, the Doctor had to grip the side bars not to lose control.   
He wrapped his legs around her to try to hoist her up, and then used one of his hands to tangle in her hair and pull her mouth to his.   
He kissed her as she straddled him and slid down over him.   
The rhythm of the music changed, the symphonie concertante slowed, and with it so did she, she arched her back and used the pressure of the cross swim to deepen her contact with him.   
The Doctor dropped his head back onto the jacuzzi rim and breathed deeply in and out, savoring every second of his wife, every inch of her body that was now tied to his.   
River took the opportunity to wrap herself closer, to run her hands on his arms, nuzzle and bite at his neck, and then let him lift and lower her weightlessly in the water, thrusting her down toward him, and slowly up, almost to his tip, but never breaking contact.   
River could feel his mouth hungrily on her body, on her breasts and chest and torso and she was enraptured in desire, like a suspended star waiting for a black hole to tear her in half.  
She pulled his head closer to her, moved her hand from behind his neck to his cheek, and he nuzzled his head against it.   
She raised his face toward hers, looked deeply into his eyes, and brushed her thumb along his lips before surrendering her mouth to his.   
They kissed each other, and held each other, and finally climaxed around each other. 

Later, River climbed out of the jacuzzi, and brought them drinks.  
He danced with her in the room filled with bubbles, to Bach’s Cello Suite Number 1.   
He carried her and spun her and maybe even dipped her once or twice, coating her in bubbles liked dipping her in whipped cream.  
They laughed together.   
When the sprinklers finished their run, they turned the extractor fans on and went outside the Tardis, under the extended protected shell.   
All scans so far showed no further Dream Snatcher near River, the Doctor, or the Tardis.

The Doctor and River sat on the ground outside, while he dried her curly mob of hair with a towel.   
She turned back to him and smiled.   
She looked up at the sky, just like him, and pointed to a bright blue star overhead that twinkled at them. She said, “Doctor, do you think that star has reached its zenith?”   
He smiled down at her, wrapped the towel around her shoulders and reclined her against his chest.   
He kissed the top of her head and she yawned happily.   
“No River, net yet, and neither have we.”   
She turned around and flashed him another brilliant smile.   
He kissed her nose, stood up, took her hand, and led her in so that they could both get some rest.   
Side by side, in their Tardis, where only happy dreams would come.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Look for more Doctor and River Song stories, every week! Next week: Part 8 - The Vengeance of the Voord!


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